Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Seems like I have been gone from home forever, but it has only been five weeks. This morning, I woke with the sun. It came up out of the East at 7 a.m. and I was ready to get up. It is going to be a fabulous day!

My plans for today were to do nothing but lay around and take walks with Yuma. Just a lazy day.

Coyote Mountain is the mountain descending from the left and behind it are the Santa Rosa Mountains.

Santa Rosa Mountains just outside my door to the north.

The tail end of the Santa Rosa Mountains. You can see the road off to the right I came down from the badlands on when I arrived yesterday.

For the most part, my day went as planned. Short walks and rest.

Then at 2 Yuma and I walked West towards Coyote Mountain. I had not planned to go far, but before long we were following a trail leading up and along the mountain. That Yuma can sniff out a trail.

We’re pretty high up on Coyote Mountain looking down on the RVs parked in the desert. Off in the distance I can see Font’s Point jutting out at the very right of the photo.

As we walked further South toward the lower end, I thought, well while we are this close to the snake, lets go find it. And that’s what we did. We ended up walking four miles today. Not what I planned at all.

Yuma is making sure I don’t get lost way up here.

When I caught up with Yuma and looked over the last ridge and looked down, there it was, a huge snake made of stones crawling along on the valley floor. It was around 3 in the afternoon, and the sun was hitting the little valley just perfectly.

When it was time to go home, Yuma lit out like he was on fire. He didn’t care if I got lost or not. I was on my own.

We headed back towards the RV, but in a more direct route. We were getting tired. When we got back, Yuma jumped on the bed and took a nice long siesta. He was one tired puppy.

Monday, January 30, 2017

The temperature was so nice overnight, I woke up earlier than usual, Out of bed by 6:30 drinking coffee and reading blogs by 7. I was determined to get out of Yuma today. Even caught the sunrise.

Thought I would try to get a lug nut on the way out of town. Stopped at a small tire repair place just down the road from Walmart. They didn’t have anything the size I needed. They sent me to O’Reilly’s saying they surely would, but no luck there either.

Then I saw another small tire repair shop and passed it because I was in the wrong lane. Turned into a Mexican neighborhood thinking I would go around the block. No such luck! The narrow road dead-ended at a privacy gate. I had to get out and with neighbor dogs barking, cats and chickens watching, I unhooked the Jeep, backed the MH up and turned around.

After hooking the Jeep back onto the MH, I said to heck with it and I just jumped on I-8 heading west figuring I could find something along the way. I don’t think one nut is that important in the scheme of things.

Went through the Imperial Sand Dunes

and then turned north on hwy 111 at El Centro, California and then up and around Brawley till I reached hwy 86. Just as I was going through Westmorland, I saw a NAPA store that said they had truck parts. Pulled off the highway real quick and ran in to ask. No luck again. Must be a rare sized lug nut.

Followed hwy 86 and then turned west on S22 at Salton City heading through the badlands. My destination for today was about 22 miles to the desert floor just east of Borrego Springs.

I stopped to take a photo of the Salton Sea behind me as I was going through the Badlands.

The road cuts through a section of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

The Clark Dry Lake bed is just ahead and the town of Borrego Springs is in the far left in that dark area on the desert floor.

I had forgotten about the time change, so got to my destination in the Clark Dry Lake on Rockhouse Trail just after 1 p.m. Pacific time. It is located on the desert floor right center. You can just see some RVs parked there in that white area just before the mountains.

I pulled over, unhooked the Jeep and drove around the area till I found a secluded spot.

Got the MH situated and forgot to check for an internet signal till I had everything done. Then I saw I had one bar of 3G and my Verizon Jetpack said I had no data available.

So, I quickly pulled out my Trucker’s antenna that I haven’t had to use this trip so far and stuck it on my flag pole high above the MH. Plugged it in and put my jetpack in the Wilson cradle and now I have 5 bars of 4G Lite. That should work. Will see when I go to publish this blog.

After that, Yuma and I took a couple of walks through the desert and then watched the sun go down. I need to start relaxing more and exploring less.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Moved very slowly this morning for some reason. Didn’t get out of bed till 8:30. By the time I finished all my morning duties, got packed and hooked up the Jeep, it was noon. Still had to dump tanks, take on water, get gas and stock up on groceries before moving into California for the next month.

The weather today is going to be great. Yesterday, we had a high of 62 with a cool north breeze. Today, we’re looking at a nice warm 72 degrees with westerly winds. Low tonight of 50. That’s great.

Where does that guy get all this energy so early in the morning?

All ready to leave Mittry Lake behind.

Went up to the Imperial Dam to get the tanks done, then stopped on the west edge of Yuma, just inside the Arizona line to fill the MH and then ran on up to the Walmart on the west side to stock up on groceries.

By this time, it was after 3:30 and I couldn’t see heading into California so late. Decided to just Walmart it for the night right here. They have an Auto Center here and I am still having problems with losing air in that one back tire, so decided to run up there and have them check it out.

Thought it was going to be a quick in and out, but not to be. The guy that does dually tires came out to look and the first thing he saw was that I was missing a lug nut. They can’t touch the RV without all the lug nuts being in place and they don’t carry that size lug nut.

Bummer! I am glad they caught the missing lug nut, but too bad they couldn’t work on the tire. Tomorrow, I will run down to a tire repair shop that has the lug nut and have them look at why I’m losing air. I crawled under the RV and looked for a nail, but nothing. I think I have a bad valve stem, but I do need to get it fixed before heading out to the California boonies.

So, get a good night’s sleep and do a little running around in the morning and hopefully get the tire problem resolved once and for all. Hopefully, I will still have plenty of time to make it to Borrego Springs before nightfall. For doing nothing all day, I sure am tired.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Today was a long day. Got up at 7:30 and Yuma and I took a walk, ate breakfast and we were out the door. Our destination, Quartzsite, Arizona, the RV capital of the world this week. I’m killing two birds with one stone, by going the 60 miles up there to walk through the big tent and fancy RVs and also attending the third annual Bloggerfest.

We arrived around 10 a.m. and it wasn’t too crowded yet. That was good. By the time I left two hours later, the place was packed and cars were lined up on W. Kuehn Street leading into the big tent area.

Here’s my first sighting of the big tent as I came into town from the south.

Turned into the first parking place I could find and walked around the many vendor tents north of the big tent and RV show.

Found a shop selling military clothing and the young lady in Army clothes was demonstrating knife sharpening with a sharpener she was selling. Wanted $25 for the sharpener. I have a pocketknife that won’t cut butter anymore, so I asked how much to sharpen my knife. I didn’t want to buy the sharpener but wanted my knife sharpened. She said she would do it for a donation, so for $2 she sharpened my knife for me. Good deal.

Yuma met a lot of new friends. As you can tell, it was a very bright sun shiny day. A little cool, but nice if you dressed properly.

These little girls didn’t want to have anything to do with Yuma.

This one was yipping like mad and wanted to play with Yuma, but Momma wouldn’t let it out of her pocket.

After wandering around all the vendor tents, I headed over to the Tyson Wells area where the big tent and RV shows are. You can find it by looking for the balloons.

The tent was already getting full of potential buyers. I think most are like me, gawkers. Just looking with no intention of buying.

This tent is big.

We walked through the tent and a few half million dollar rigs and we were done with the “big shuwww” for another year. Time to head on over to the Blogger-Fest.

Yuma and I arrived a little early, around 12:30, and we were the first ones there.

Yuma and I sat around and waited and sure enough bloggers started to arrive. Even Yuma found friends.

Here’s our host Lorne Green in the red flannel shirt. He and his wife, Susan were gracious enough to organize this year’s event, and they did a great job. Their blog is A Place Called “Away”

I’m not going to try to put names with the bloggers. If you know them then I don’t need to, and if you don’t know them, well, you still won’t know them.

After mingling for awhile, Loren called the group together and we went around the circle giving information about ourselves and our reasons for blogging.

Afterwards, we mingled again and ate snacks till the coldness of the late afternoon drove us home.

I had a great time meeting people I have followed on their blogs and think it is great that once a year, we all travel great distances to meet each other in person here in Quartzsite, Arizona.

I know I was unable to get a photo of everyone there, but I did get a good sampling. My side of the circle kinda got left out.

After our hour and a half drive back to Mittry Lake, Yuma and I were tired puppies. Yuma went to bed and I, of course, had to stay up and write this blog. I’m trying to remember that this is “fun”.